Edward Feser's Blog, page 19

More about All One in Christ

The latest on my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory : I was interviewed about the book by Carl Olson on the Ignatius Press Podcast.  I was interviewed by Cy Kellett on Catholic Answers Focus.  I was interviewed by Ken Huck on the Meet the Author radio program.  Reviewing the book at Catholic World Report, Gregory Sullivan writes: “Among its many virtues, All One in Christ is a work of genuine argumentation.  Meticulous and temperate in stating the case he is critiquing, Feser dismantles CRT with his characteristic rigor.”  The Spectator included the book on its list of the best books of 2022.  The book is available in German translation, and was reviewed favorably by Sebastian Ostritsch in Die Tagespost.  Other reviews of and interviews about All One in Christ can be found here, here, here, and here.

Koons on Aristotle and quantum mechanics

My review of Robert Koons’s excellent new book Is St. Thomas’s Aristotelian Philosophy of Nature Obsolete? appears at Public Discourse. 

The wages of gin

My review of Jane Peyton’s The Philosophy of Gin appears in the Christmas 2022 issue of The Lamp magazine.

On the death of Pope Benedict XVI

I’m not sure when I first became aware of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was later to become Pope Benedict XVI.  During my high school years in the early 80s, I had only a vague awareness of the doctrinal controversies roiling the Church.  I then knew little more than that they had something to do with liberal theologians and their opposition to Pope John Paul II.  My first clear memory of Ratzinger himself is from the very end of that decade, when I had left the Church and was on my way to becoming an atheist.  I read a magazine article about him and his work as the pope’s chief doctrinal officer.  The impression it left me with was of a man of deep learning and gravitas.  For some reason, what stood out especially was a remark of his quoted in the article, to the effect that a sound theology “cannot… act as if the history of thought only seriously began with Kant.”  (I later learned that this came from a lecture of his since reprinted as the third chapter of God’s Word: Scripture – Tradition – Office .)

There were, as this indicated, serious minds in the Church who affirmed the continuing validity of the premodern philosophical and theological worldview I was then questioning.  It would take more than a decade for me to see that they were right.  But when I did, Ratzinger proved a helpful guide.  His interview book Salt of the Earth was something I read when I began to consider coming back to the Catholic faith.  That and the earlier interview book The Ratzinger Report (which appeared in the middle of the 1980s but is still depressingly relevant) made clear what was going on in the Church.  They also made it clear that the pope had made a very wise decision in naming Ratzinger the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  On the one hand, he was highly intelligent and cultured, well-read in the modern ideas that informed contemporary hostility to Catholic teaching, and keen as far as possible to address them by way of rational persuasion.  On the other hand, he also had deep knowledge of and love for the tradition of the Church, and saw that the Church was nothing if she did not preserve and pass on that tradition whole and undefiled.

This combination of traits informed many of the policies and documents for which he was responsible as head of CDF and, later, as pope.  Donum Veritatis reaffirms in no uncertain terms the duty of Catholic theologians to teach in conformity with the tradition of the Church and the binding statements of the Magisterium.  At the same time, more than any previous official teaching document, it makes clear that there can be cases in which non-infallible magisterial acts can be deficient, and in which a faithful theologian can, accordingly, respectfully raise criticisms.  Given the ambiguities of several magisterial statements of recent years, the timing of Donum Veritatis seems providential.  In any event, and as I have discussed elsewhere, as head of CDF and as pope, Ratzinger was in reality the opposite of the “Panzer Cardinal” of self-serving liberal myth.  Disciplinary action was for him always a last resort, and mild even then.  His preferred approach was to engage even the Church’s harshest critics at the level of rational argumentation.

Again, though, fidelity to tradition was non-negotiable, and Ratzinger saw that only what he famously called a “hermeneutic of continuity” was consistent with the basic claims of Catholicism.  This hermeneutic even led him gently to criticize the direction the hierarchy had taken the Church in recent decades.  Though very much a man of Vatican II, he thought Gaudium et Spes too optimistic about the modern world.  He had reservations about Pope John Paul II’s interreligious prayer meeting in Assisi in 1986.  While condemning Archbishop Lefebvre’s disobedience in consecrating bishops without papal approval, Ratzinger acknowledged that those who followed Lefebvre had understandably been scandalized by the changes in the Church since the council.  He urged his fellow churchmen to take the concerns of traditionalists seriously:

[I]t is a duty for us to examine ourselves, as to what errors we have made, and which ones we are making even now…

[S]chisms can take place only when certain truths and certain values of the Christian faith are no longer lived and loved within the Church… It will not do to attribute everything to political motives, to nostalgia, or to cultural factors of minor importance…

For all these reasons, we ought to see this matter primarily as the occasion for an examination of conscience.  We should allow ourselves to ask fundamental questions, about the defects in the pastoral life of the Church, which are exposed by these events…

[W]e want to ask ourselves where there is lack of clarity in ourselves…

The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero.  The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.

This idea is made stronger by things that are now happening.  That which previously was considered most holy – the form in which the liturgy was handed down – suddenly appears as the most forbidden of all things, the one thing that can safely be prohibited...

All this leads a great number of people to ask themselves if the Church of today is really the same as that of yesterday, or if they have changed it for something else without telling people.

His emphasis on combining fidelity to tradition and rational engagement with those who disagree continued after Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, and is reflected in two of the great documents of his pontificate.  His homily of May 7, 2005 emphasizes that papal teaching authority exists for the sake of protecting the deposit of faith, rather than giving the man who happens to hold the office a means for implementing some personal theological agenda:

The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law.  On the contrary: the Pope's ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word.  He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism…

The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.  Thus, his power is not being above, but at the service of, the Word of God.  It is incumbent upon him to ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in usage.

At the same time, in his famous 2006 Regensburg address, Benedict emphasized the centrality of reason to the Catholic faith and to the Christian conception of God, contrasting it sharply with the voluntarist tendency to see God as an unfathomable will who issues arbitrary commands.  He approvingly quotes Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus’s remark that “whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly,” and endorses the emperor’s view that (as Benedict paraphrases Manuel) “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”  The pope added:

[T]he faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy… God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos… Consequently, Christian worship is… worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason.

Needless to say, all of this makes for a sharp contrast with recent years in the Church, which have seen policies and magisterial statements whose continuity with tradition has in some cases been unclear, and which are backed not by any attempt at rational persuasion but rather appeal to the raw power of ecclesiastical office.

Like so many others, I was elated when Ratzinger was elected pope.  And like so many others, I was crestfallen when he abdicated.  Such a move was so grave that I felt certain at the time that his death must be imminent.  For why would he shirk his paternal responsibilities, unless he feared incapacitation of a kind that would make him strictly incapable of fulfilling them?  Yet as the years passed and he remained intellectually active, it became clear that that was not in fact what was going on.  And that made his decision not only more baffling, but also more heartbreaking.  In his inaugural sermon, Benedict famously asked Catholics to pray for him, that he would “not flee for fear of the wolves.”  And yet it has come to seem to many that that is precisely what he ended up doing.

I have always stopped short of making that judgment myself, simply because I don’t know all the facts and don’t know his heart – and because I have long had a deep affection for the man that makes me want to think the best.  Still, in my view, the story of our times, both in the world and in the Church, is more than anything else a story of men failing to live up to their duties as fathers, providers, protectors – and of the catastrophic consequences that follow when they fail.  And like many others, I find it difficult to evade the conclusion that the state into which the Church has fallen over the last decade would have been avoided had Benedict remained our spiritual father until death.

But again, I do not know that it is fair to blame him.  Even if it is, great men can have great flaws and still remain great men.  And Benedict XVI was a great man, who did enormous good for the Church.  Let us give thanks for him, and pray for his eternal rest.

Why did the Incarnation occur precisely when it did?

Why did the second Person of the Trinity become man two thousand years ago – rather than at the beginning of the human race, or near the end of the world, or at some other point in history?  The Christmas season is an especially appropriate time to consider this question.  And as is so often the case, St. Thomas Aquinas provides guidance for reflection.  He addresses the issue in the last two Articles of Question 1 of the Third Part of the Summa Theologiae.

No sin, no Incarnation

In order to understand his explanation, it is important to consider what he says earlier in the Question, in Article 3, about the issue of whether God would have become incarnate had the human race not fallen into sin.  Aquinas answers in the negative.  Though God could have done so, Aquinas says, he would not have.  Scripture so emphasizes the theme that the Incarnation occurred as a remedy for sin that the natural conclusion to draw, in Aquinas’s view, is that there would have been no need for it otherwise.  Elaborating on the point, Aquinas says that in falling into sin, man “stooped to corporeal things” instead of rising up to God, and that this is what made it fitting for God to become corporeal so as to raise man back up again. 

Now, why exactly is this fitting?  Yet earlier in the Question, in Article 1, Aquinas emphasizes that “the very nature of God is goodness… [and] it belongs to the essence of goodness to communicate itself to others.”  And out of his goodness, says Aquinas, God “did not despise the weakness of His own handiwork.”  The idea seems to be that sin has exposed us to the weaknesses entailed by corporeality (from which we would have been protected had our first parents obeyed).  To restore us to strength, God in his goodness imparts himself to us by becoming a member of the human race and thereby taking on corporeality. 

Exactly how this strengthens us is elaborated on in turn in Article 2, wherein Aquinas makes a number of points.  For one thing, the Incarnation aids us in disentangling ourselves from the evil in which we’ve become enmeshed.  For that God has taken on our nature and the devil has not helps us to come to prefer the former to the latter.  And by underlining the dignity of human nature, the Incarnation prompts us to avoid sullying that nature with further sin.  Moreover, Christ’s innocence encourages us away from the sin of presumption, and his humility encourages us away from pride.  And of course, his sacrifice on the cross makes satisfaction for our guilt.

For another thing, the Incarnation positively aids us in pursuing what is good, in several ways.  By speaking to us directly, as a human being himself, God makes the truths of revelation better known to us, thereby fostering the theological virtue of faith.  By taking on our nature he also shows the depth of his love for us, thereby fostering the virtue of hope.  Insofar as this prompts us to love God in return, it also fosters in us the virtue of charity.  By living a perfect life, Christ sets an example of how we ought to live.  By uniting divinity and humanity in himself, he reveals something of the supernatural end of the beatific vision, which also involves such a union (albeit not in exactly the same way).

Not too soon

In these ways, then, the aim of the Incarnation was to remedy the sin into which the human race has fallen.  But now Aquinas goes on to argue that to realize this aim, it was best that the Incarnation occurred just when it did, rather than closer to either the beginning or the end of human history.

In Article 5, he proposes several reasons why it was not fitting for the Incarnation to occur soon after the fall of our first parents.  First of all, in order for human beings to understand the need for the Incarnation, it was necessary for them to perceive the inadequacy of their natural powers and their desperate need for special divine assistance.  And only when “the disease gained strength” was that possible.  The idea here is that the dire ramifications and intractability of sin are fully manifest only after many generations have passed.

Second, we tend (by nature, Aquinas seems to be saying) to arrive at perfection only from imperfection, and to understand the spiritual only after understanding the natural.  Putting the Incarnation at the beginning of human history rather than later in the story would be contrary to this order of things.  Third, with the Incarnation as with the arrival of the merely human dignitaries we are familiar with in everyday experience, it is fitting that the event be preceded by heralds.    

Aquinas does not elaborate, but it seems to me that what he is driving at is the need for what is traditionally referred to as the praeparatio evangelica or “preparation for the Gospel.”  The Incarnation could not properly be understood just at any old time or location.  Rather, the right cultural preconditions had to be in place.  Consider that, as St. Paul famously noted, the notion of God incarnate dying on the cross was a stumbling block for the Jews, and seemed foolishness to the Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23).  To be sure, it is not in fact foolishness and should not have been a stumbling block.  But there is a sense in which it is precisely because the Jews and many of the Greeks had a proper understanding of the divine that it seemed to be both.

It is clear enough why a Jewish audience of the day would be scandalized by the doctrine.  A commitment to God’s unicity and absolute distinctness from the creation had been cemented into the psychology of the people of Israel over the course of centuries, as a long series of prophets and divine punishments gradually purged the nation of any vestige of idolatry.  The claim that there are three Persons in the one God, and that one of them took on flesh and died on a cross, was therefore bound to be shocking.  But these ideas would not have been properly understood if they were not shocking.  If God is one, how can he be tripersonal?  If he is the creator of the material world, how could he take on flesh?  It was essential that the Jewish people, the first recipients of the Gospel, understood that however these doctrines are to be spelled out, they are not to be interpreted in terms of the idea that the God of Israel is merely part of some pantheon of corporeal deities – as they very easily would have been interpreted had a horror of idolatry not taken deep root among the Jewish people by the first century AD.  And inculcating such a horror was part of the point of the establishment of the ancient nation of Israel and the law given through Moses.

Now, the Gentiles too needed a proper conception of the divine nature if they were correctly to understand the central claims of Christianity once it was propagated beyond its original Jewish context.  Suppose your understanding of the divine were molded entirely by stories about the gods of Olympus, or by myths about dying deities like Adonis, Attis, Osiris, or Dionysus.  Then the Trinity will sound like just another pantheon, the virginal conception of Jesus will be interpreted as comparable to Zeus’s impregnation of various mortal women, and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus will be reminiscent of a dying and rising fertility god.  In other words, they will seem to be mere variations on familiar pagan themes.  However, if instead you conceive of God as the purely actual prime unmoved mover of the world (as in Aristotelianism), or as the non-composite One from which all else derives (as in Neo-Platonism), then the claims of Christianity will sound as shocking as they did to the Jews of the first century.  How could that which is pure actuality take on flesh and suffer?  How could that which is utterly simple or non-composite be three divine Persons? 

Again, these central claims of Christianity, properly understood, are in fact neither scandalous nor foolish.  The point, though, is that they are so subtle and difficult – and indeed, they are mysteries in the sense that we could not have learned of them apart from special divine revelation – that a proper initial understanding of them shouldbe jarring.  If it were not, that would likely reflect some serious misinterpretation (as the later Christological heresies do).

A last consideration Aquinas gives in Article 5 is that faith and charity tend to wane over time, and indeed it is foretold that they will wane especially in the last days.  Hence it was important that the Incarnation not occur too early in human history, lest its benefits become inaccessible too soon.  But this brings us to Aquinas’s treatment of the question of why the Incarnation did not occur later in history.

Not too late

In Article 6, Aquinas explains why the Incarnation was not put off until the end of the world (as it might seem it should have been, given the considerations adduced in the previous Article).  Once again he makes several points, and the first is, I think, most easily explained in terms of the language of efficient and final causes (though Aquinas himself does not here use those terms).  As he said in the previous article, because with human beings imperfection precedes perfection, it was fitting that the perfection of the Incarnation be preceded by the imperfection of human history between the fall of our first parents and the time of Christ.  Now, you might think of the Incarnation as the final cause or end toward which that history pointed.  And in our experience, the realization of an end or final cause comes later in time than the processes that lead to it.

However, the Incarnation is also an efficientcause of our perfection.  And in our experience, efficient causes typically come beforetheir effects (even if, as the metaphysician knows, some efficient causes operate simultaneously with their effects, and God’s causality is altogether atemporal).  Hence, in order for us to be able to understand the Incarnation as a final cause, it was fitting that it not occur too early in human history.  But in order for us to be able to understand it also as an efficient cause, it was fitting that it not occur too late in human history – that we be able to observe its effects in the foundation of the Church and spreading of the Gospel in the centuries after the time of Christ.  (Anyway, this is, again, my own explanation of what Aquinas is getting at in his first point.)

Another point Aquinas makes (his third, actually, but I’ll treat them out of order) is that it is fitting that human beings be saved by faith in something past as well as by faith in something future.  He does not elaborate, but I’d propose doing so as follows.  Faith involves trusting the testimony of divine authority concerning matters that are usually not otherwise knowable to us.  Now, sometimes things are not knowable to us because they are in the future, to which we have no access.  But sometimes they are not knowable to us because they are past, and the past is also something to which we have no access, or at least no direct access.  Hence, Aquinas seems to be saying, it is fitting that faith involves matters of the latter sort as well as the former sort.  And the Incarnation’s being a past event (which it could not have been if it occurred at the end of the world) makes it possible for it to be among the things we know by faith in what God has done in the past.  (For those who lived before the Incarnation, of course, it would have been something they would know by faith in what is future.)

The remaining (and in my view more interesting) point made by Aquinas is this.  There is a tendency toward decline in human history, such that “men's knowledge of God [begins] to grow dim and their morals lax.”  This is why God had to send a succession of prophets to restore things, such as Abraham and Moses – and, finally, Christ, who effected a much greater restoration precisely by virtue of his Incarnation.  “But if this remedy had been put off till the end of the world,” Aquinas says, “all knowledge and reverence of God and all uprightness of morals would have been swept away from the earth.”

The idea seems to be that the effects of original sin are so profound that without the Incarnation, even a succession of prophets would provide only temporary respite, and the human race would eventually sink into complete darkness and depravity unprecedented even in the history of the world prior to Christ.  As it is, Christian teaching is that a period of such darkness and depravity will indeed occur prior to the end of the world.  But it will occur precisely as a result of apostasy from the faith.  And Aquinas’s point seems to be that it would have occurred sooner, or would have occurred without the intervening period of illumination provided by Christian teaching, had the Incarnation not happened when it did.

Just how bad things would have been is indicated by another remark Aquinas makes, to the effect that God “came when He knew it was fitting to succor, and when His boons would be welcome.”  Perhaps what Aquinas means is that had the Incarnation occurred much later, then the human race would have become so extremely corrupt that the Incarnation would simply not have been accepted.  Of course, prophets are typically resisted, but not by everyone, which is why they go on to be revered and their message has an impact at least after their deaths.  But the implication of Aquinas’s remarks may be that had the Incarnation been put off too long, human minds and wills would have been so thoroughly corrupted that it would have been of no effect.  A chilling thought, that – and also an indicator of how depraved human beings will become in the great apostasy predicted for the last days.

Further reading:

Putting the Cross back into Christmas

Christmas every day

The still, small voice of Christmas

When do popes teach infallibly?

It is well-known that the Catholic Church teaches that popes are infallible when they speak ex cathedra or exercise their extraordinary magisterium.  What that means is that if a pope formally presents some teaching in a manner intended to be definitive and absolutely binding, he is prevented by divine assistance from falling into error.  The ordinary magisterium of the Church, and the pope when exercising it, are also infallible when they simply reiterate some doctrine that has been consistently taught for centuries.  (Elsewhere, I’ve discussed the criteria for determining whether some such doctrine has been taught infallibly.)  Even when papal teaching on faith and morals is not presented in a definitive and absolutely binding way, assent is normally required of Catholics.  (The rare exceptions are something I’ve also addressed elsewhere.)

Is papal teaching on faith and morals alwaysinfallible, even when not presented either ex cathedra or as a mere reiteration of teaching independently known to be infallible?  The Church has not only never claimed this, but deliberately stopped short of claiming it when affirming papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council (despite the fact that some at the time were pushing for this stronger claim).  Hence, that popes are not infallible when not teaching in the manner I’ve described is commonly acknowledged by theologians and churchmen (and, it is worth noting, by traditionalists, conservatives, and liberals alike).  Yet in recent years, some overenthusiastic admirers of Pope Francis, keen to defend his more controversial remarks, have argued for the stronger claim.  For example, Stephen Walford and Emmett O’Regan have asserted that all papal teaching on faith and morals is protected from error, even when not presented in a definitive manner.

But there are two problems with this view.  First, there are no good arguments for it.  Second, there are decisive arguments against it.  Let’s consider these points in turn.

Walford’s and O’Regan’s confusions

In defense of the stronger claim, Walford appeals to several papal statements.  But none of them shows what he claims it does.  For example, he cites a passage from a homily of Pope Benedict XVI that describes papal authority in a very general way, but does not even address the question of whether a pope always speaks infallibly.  He cites a passage from Pius IX that affirms that Catholics ought to submit to papal teaching even when it is not presented in a definitive manner, but Pius too does not there even address the question of whether a pope always speaks infallibly.  Whether a teaching is infallible and whether it is owed assent are, again, separate questions.

The closest Walford gets to a papal remark that might seem to support his case is Pope Innocent III’s statement that “the Lord clearly intimates that Peter’s successors will never at any time deviate from the Catholic faith.”  But Walford himself immediately goes on to admit that it cannot literally be the case that popes “will never at any time” teach error, and cites the famous example of the medieval pope John XXII’s having taught error vis-à-vis the particular judgment.  Walford emphasizes that John held these erroneous views in his capacity as a private theologian (though it is important to note that John did express them publicly in sermons).  What matters for present purposes, though, is that by Walford’s own admission, Pope Innocent’s remark needs qualification.  Now, as already noted, the standard qualification would be that popes can err when neither speaking ex cathedra nor, in their ordinary magisterium, merely reiterating teaching already independently known to be infallible.  And Walford gives no argument for qualifying it in some other way.

Walford also cites this remark from Pope St. John Paul II:

Alongside this infallibility of ex cathedra definitions, there is the charism of the Holy Spirit’s assistance, granted to Peter and his successors so that they would not err in matters of faith and morals, but rather shed great light on the Christian people.  This charism is not limited to exceptional cases.

But this passage too simply fails to show what Walford thinks it does.  John Paul merely says that infallibility can extend beyond the exceptional case of ex cathedra statements, and as I have already acknowledged, a pope’s exercise of the ordinary magisterium can also be infallible when it involves reiterating doctrines consistently taught by the Church for centuries.  But John Paul II did not say, and it does not follow, that infallibility extends to absolutely every statement a pope makes about faith or morals.

O’Regan’s case is, in anything, even weaker than Walford’s.  His opening paragraph appears to suggest that popes are “protect[ed]… from erring in matters pertaining to faith and morals” even in “non-definitive, non-infallible teachings of the ordinary Magisterium.”  This would amount to the thesis that non-infallible teaching is infallible, which is, of course, a self-contradiction.  Not a promising start. 

O’Regan’s argument is that even if the Church’s explicit teaching on papal infallibility does not by itself entail that absolutely every papal statement pertaining to faith and morals (even non-ex cathedraones) must be free of error, this conclusion nevertheless follows from another Catholic doctrine, namely the teaching on the indefectibility of the Church.  He quotes from the Catholic Encyclopedia’s exposition of this doctrine, which says, among other things, that the Church “can never become corrupt in faith or in morals” and that “the Church, in defining the truths of revelation [could not] err in the smallest point.”

But, like the passages cited by Walford, this one simply does not show what O’Regan thinks it does.  What the Catholic Encyclopedia says is that the Church cannot err when “defining” a truth of revelation.  What this means is that it is protected from error when it puts forward some teaching in a solemn and definitive manner (as it does in the decrees of an ecumenical council, or through an ex cathedra papal definition).  The claim is not that absolutely every magisterial statement, including those of a less solemn and definitive nature, will be free of error.  Nor does the doctrine of the Church’s indefectibility imply that.  Certainly O’Regan does nothing to show otherwise (as opposed to merely assertingotherwise).

Like Walford, O’Regan draws fallacious inferences from the passages from Innocent III and John Paul II referred to above.  And like Walford, O’Regan quotes at length from various magisterial passages that expound on papal authority in a general way, but simply do not address the specific question at hand, viz. whether papal statements on faith and morals must in absolutely allcircumstances be free of error.  Worse, O’Regan’s rambling article also contains remarks that undermine his case.  He writes:

It is necessary for the ordinary Magisterium to be ready to meet the ever-changing needs of the Church throughout the vicissitudes of history… As such, the ordinary Magisterium is permanently open to refinement and doctrinal development, and is not limited to merely repeat judgments which have been fixed firmly in the past. This confusion seems to arise from a failure to distinguish between the infallible teachings of the extraordinary and ordinary and universal Magisterium (which are in themselves irreformable), and the everyday non-infallible teachings of the ordinary Magisterium, which by their very nature, must remain reformable in order to meet whatever different circumstances may arise throughout the constantly shifting environments of Church history.

Now, if a teaching is “reformable,” then it must be possible for it to be erroneous.  In which case, O’Regan is here acknowledging that errors in at least some kinds of magisterial teaching are compatible with the Church’s claim to indefectibility.  But in that case, the appeal to indefectibility can hardly by itself show that papal statements pertaining to faith and morals are guaranteed to be free of error in absolutely all circumstances (rather than only when a pope speaks ex cathedraor reaffirms traditional teaching independently known to be infallible).

The actual teaching of the Church

So, Walford and O’Regan fail to make their case.  Meanwhile, the case for the contrary view – to the effect that it is possible for popes to err when neither teaching ex cathedra nor reiterating the consistent teaching of centuries – is, I maintain, decisive.  There are three main sets of considerations that show this:

1. The qualifications on infallibility:

When the First Vatican Council solemnly proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility, it confined itself to asserting that popes are infallible when teaching ex cathedra, specifically.  It did not go beyond that, even though some at the time favored its doing so.  Similarly, the Second Vatican Council, in Lumen Gentium, says that popes are infallible when putting forward some teaching in a definitiveway.  Some might note that the relevant passages don’t explicitly deny that papal teaching on faith and morals is infallible even apart from ex cathedra or definitive statements, but that is beside the point.  What matters is that the Church does not herself teach the extreme position that Walford and O’Regan affirm.  It is at best a theological opinion, rather than a doctrine in any way binding on Catholics.

Moreover, taking the view that papal error is indeed possible outside of ex cathedra statements is permitted by the Church, and is explicitly taught in approved theological works of undeniable orthodoxy from the period before Vatican II.  For example, Van Noort’s Dogmatic Theology, Volume II: Christ’s Church, after noting the qualifications on papal infallibility, says:

Thus far we have been discussing Catholic teaching.  It may be useful to add a few points about purely theological opinions – opinions with regard to the pope when he is not speaking ex cathedra.  All theologians admit that the pope can make a mistake in matters of faith and morals when so speaking: either by proposing a false opinion in a matter not yet defined, or by innocently differing from some doctrine already defined.  Theologians disagree, however, over the question of whether the pope can become a formal heretic by stubbornly clinging to an error in a matter already defined.  The more probable and respectful opinion, followed by Suarez, Bellarmine and many others, holds that just as God has not till this day ever permitted such a thing to happen, so too he never will permit a pope to become a formal and public heretic.  Still, some competent theologians do concede that the pope when not speaking ex cathedra could fall into formal heresy. (p. 294)

Similarly, Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogmastates:

With regard to the doctrinal teaching of the Church it must be well noted that not all the assertions of the Teaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals are infallible and consequently irrevocable.  Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councils representing the whole episcopate and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra... The ordinary and usual form of the Papal teaching activity is not infallible.  Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible.

Nevertheless normally they are to be accepted with an inner assent which is based on the high supernatural authority of the Holy See… The so-called "silentium obsequiosum," that is "reverent silence," does not generally suffice.  By way of exception, the obligation of inner agreement may cease if a competent expert, after a renewed scientific investigation of all grounds, arrives at the positive conviction that the decision rests on an error. (p. 10)

Some will no doubt respond by pointing out that works like Van Noort’s and Ott’s are not themselves official magisterial documents.  That is true, but beside the point.  What matters is that such works were ecclesiastically approved and widely used for the education of priests and theologians in an era when the Church’s emphasis on papal doctrinal authority was perhaps stronger than it ever had been.  Yet they explicitly reject the extreme position later defended by writers like Walford and O’Regan.  They could not have done so if the Walford/O’Regan view really were the teaching of the Church.

(It is worth adding, by the way, vis-à-vis Van Noort’s remarks about Bellarmine and Suarez, that those eminent theologians did in fact allow that a pope’s falling into even formal heresy when not teaching ex cathedra could at least in theory occur.  They simply judged this too extremely improbable to consider it a live possibility.)

2. Magisterial teaching that contradicts the Walford/O’Regan view:

As it happens, though, it isn’t just that the Church does not teach what Walford and O’Regan say it does, and that the opposite view is permitted.  There are also magisterial statements that positively conflict with the view defended by Walford and O’Regan.

For example, Donum Veritatis, issued under Pope St. John Paul II, explicitly allows that there can be cases where non-definitive magisterial statements “might not be free from all deficiencies” and in some cases may even be open to respectful and tentative criticism by theologians.  (I have discussed this document in detail elsewhereand won’t repeat here what I’ve already said there.)

We saw above how Walford and O’Regan appeal to a statement by Pope Innocent III in defense of their position.  But that particular pope also taught something that points in precisely the opposite direction, when he said: “Only on account of a sin committed against the faith can I be judged by the church” (quoted in J. Michael Miller, The Shepherd and the Rock: Origins, Development, and Mission of the Papacy, at p. 292).  Now, to sin against the faith would be to teach error on some matter of faith or morals.  Hence Innocent III was teaching that it is possible for such error to occur (when a pope is not teaching in a definitive way).  Here Innocent was simply acknowledging a principle already recognized in Gratian’s codification of canon law, and as Christian Washburn has noted in a recent article, two later popes (Innocent IV and Paul IV) made similar statements.

Now, if Walford and O’Regan accept this teaching of Pope Innocent, then they will have to give up their position.  But suppose they hold instead that Innocent was simply mistaken about this.  In that case too, they will have to give up their position.  For if Innocent was wrong to hold that a pope could err when teaching non-definitively on some matter pertaining to faith and morals, then this would itself be an error on his part on a matter pertaining to faith and morals!  In which case, Walford and O’Regan will have to admit that popes can commit such errors when speaking in a non-definitive way.  So, whether they accept Innocent’s teaching or reject it, either way they will have to give up their own position.

There’s yet more irony.  Pope Francis teaches in Gaudete et Exsultate that “doctrine, or better, our understanding and expression of it, is not a closed system, devoid of the dynamic capacity to pose questions, doubts, inquiries.”  Now, if it can sometimes be legitimate to question and doubt doctrines or expressions of doctrine, then that entails that there can be at least some cases where doctrine or its expression could be in error.  For how could it ever be legitimate to doubt or question it otherwise?  But then Pope Francis’s own teaching contradicts the extreme position Walford and O’Regan put forward precisely in his defense!  Hence, if they accept that teaching, they will have to give up their position.  But suppose that Walford and O’Regan were instead to judge that Pope Francis was mistaken here.  In that case too, they would have to give up their position.  For if the pope is mistaken here, then it is an error pertaining to faith and morals.  And in that case, Pope Francis’s teaching would itself be an instance of a pope teaching such error when not speaking ex cathedra.  Either way, then, Pope Francis’s own teaching refutes the position taken by Walford and O’Regan.

3. Historical examples of erroneous papal statements:

But it gets even worse than that for Walford and O’Regan.  For it’s not just that popes might, in theory, err on a matter of faith or morals when not speaking ex cathedra.  It’s that this has in fact happened, albeit in only a handful of cases.  As already noted, even Walford admits that John XXII erred (and Walford fails to explain why the qualification this requires him to make to his position does not entirely undermine it).  But the most spectacular example is that of Pope Honorius, whose ambiguous words at the very least gave aid and comfort to the Monothelite heresy.  And two papally-approved councils of the Church accused him of worse than that, insofar as they condemned him for holding to this doctrinal error himself.  (I have discussed the case of Honorius in detail hereand here.)

Now, if Walford and O’Regan accept these councils’ characterization of Honorius’s views, then they will have to give up their position, since that would be to acknowledge that popes can err when not speaking ex cathedra.  But suppose instead that Walford and O’Regan were to claim that the councils in question erroneously characterized Honorius’s position.  Then, in that case too, they will have to give up their position.  For, again, the councils in question were ratified by popes.  The popes in question thus implicitly affirmed that a pope (such as Honorius) could err when not speaking ex cathedra.  If these popes were wrong about that, then they erred.  Either way, then, Walford and O’Regan will have to give up the position that popes cannot err even when not speaking ex cathedra. 

So, not only are there no good arguments for the extreme position defended by Walford and O’Regan, but it turns out to be incoherent.  To get around the various pieces of counterevidence I’ve set out, Walford and O’Regan would have to attribute error to popes precisely in the course of trying to show that popes can never err.

Related reading:

The Church permits criticism of popes under certain circumstances

Aquinas on St. Paul’s correction of St. Peter

Papal fallibility

The error and condemnation of Pope Honorius

Can Pope Honorius be defended?

The strange case of Pope Vigilius

Two popes and idolatry

Pope Victor redux?

Denial flows into the Tiber

Is God’s existence a “hypothesis”?

Over at Twitter I’ve caused some annoyance by objecting to the phrase “the God hypothesis.”  The context was a discussion of Stephen Meyer’s book Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe .  My view is that to present theism as a “hypothesis” that might be confirmed by scientific findings is at best irrelevant to actually establishing God’s existence and at worst harmful insofar as it insinuates serious misunderstandings of the nature of God and his relationship to the world.  Since Twitter is not a medium conducive to detailed and nuanced exposition, here is a post explaining at greater length what I mean. 

First, what is a hypothesis?  Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophyprovides a useful first approximation:

hypothesis, n. a conditional or provisional explanation of observed facts or of their connection with each other; a tentative explanation suggestive of further experiment and verification.

“Conditional,” “provisional,” and “tentative” are crucial terms here, but I hasten to emphasize that I am not objecting to someone’s taking a conditional, provisional, or tentative attitude as such.  Suppose, for example, that someone said that he was contemplating Aquinas’s First Way or Leibniz’s cosmological argument, and so far was willing to accept them provisionally or tentatively but was not certain that they were successful proofs.  Am I claiming that such a person must be guilty of a misunderstanding of the nature of God or his relationship to the world?  Not at all, even though I personally think both those arguments happen to be successful demonstrations of God’s existence.  Again, it is not tentativeness as such that I am objecting to.

The problem is with the specific way that a hypothesis is provisional or tentative, and that way is indicated by Wuellner’s reference to the need for “further experiment and verification.”  But it is brought out better by another definition of our term, this time from John Carlson’s Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition:

hypothesis (n.): As used in the natural sciences, a predictive judgment about an empirical event that will occur under a describable set of conditions.  (Hypotheses are sometimes generated by more general theories; if the predicted events in fact occur, the hypotheses are said to be confirmed, and this in turn provides additional rational support for the theories in question.)  Also: “hypothetical” (adj.), “hypothetically” (adv.).

Now, I am citing works in the Scholastic tradition to reflect the point of view from which I approach these matters, but on this particular issue I don’t think Wuellner’s and Carlson’s account differs in any relevant way from what your average non-Scholastic philosopher or scientist would say.  The idea is, first, that a hypothesis is a tentative explanation of some empirical event that will occur under certain conditions.  Hence, suppose some effect E occurs under certain conditions of type T.  We might hypothesize that a cause of type C is responsible, and then go on to test this by bringing about an instance of Cunder conditions of type T and seeing whether an instance of Efollows.  If it does not, we might form some new hypothesis, to the effect that it is another sort of cause (of type D, say) that is responsible.  But even if our prediction is confirmed, it is possible in principle that it is nevertheless not really C that is producing E, but some other causal factor that is merely correlated with C.  So we’d need to do further testing to rule that possibility out.  And in any event, if there really is some causal connection between C and E, only such empirical investigation is going to reveal it, because the causal relationship between them, even if real, is going to be contingent.  Again, it will be possible that something other than C is the cause, so that the most that further testing can do is render this supposition improbable(even if, perhaps, highlyimprobable).

Now, this sort of relationship between C and E is simply not like the relationship between God and the world as that is understood by classical theism.  God’s creating the world is not a matter of making it the case that this specific thing happens in the world rather than thatspecific thing.  Rather, creation is a matter of making it the case that there is any world at all.  Moreover, theism holds that the fact that there is any world at all is something that could not even in principle have obtained in the absence of divine creative action.  For classical theism, if we’re talking about a view according to which the world mighthave existed apart from God, but simply happensnot to do so, then we’re not really talking about theism but rather about something that only superficially resembles it.

Of course, the atheist will deny that the world has this character, and I’m not denying for a moment that showing that the atheist is wrong about that requires argumentation.  The point is that the kind of argumentation involved will not be a matter of forming empirical hypotheses and then testing them (using Mill’s Methods, or appealing to probability theory, or whatever).  That’s just a category mistake.  It is instead going to involve metaphysical reasoning that begins with much deeper facts about the world – for example, the fact that the things that make it up are compounds of essence and existence or of actuality and potentiality – and arguing that nothing that is like that could exist even for an instant without a sustaining cause that is not composite in such ways.  (Longtime readers will understand what I am talking about, but for the uninitiated, these are examples of concepts appealed to in Thomistic and Aristotelian arguments for God’s existence, which I have expounded and defended at length elsewhere.)

Certainly it would be absurd to suppose that such reasoning is like the hypothesis formation and testing familiar from natural science.  For example, it would be absurd to suggest that something whose essence and existence are distinct might in principle be sustained in being by something other than ipsum esse subsistens, and that we need to come up with some empirical test to show that this is unlikely.  That would be as absurd as, say, a Platonist arguing that something other than the Form of the Good might in principle be responsible for things having whatever measure of goodness they have, but that this is improbable given the empirical evidence.  Or it is as absurd as a mathematician proposing that there is solid confirming empirical evidence that makes it probable that 12 x 48 = 576.  The point isn’t that we don’t need to provide an argument for the claim that 12 x 48 = 576, or for the claim that there is such a thing as the Form of the Good, or, again, for the claim that the world could not exist even in principle apart from God.  The point, again, is that the kind of argumentation we would have to give would not involve forming hypotheses and then coming up with ways to test them empirically.  That simply would not reflect the nature of mathematical facts, or the nature of the Form of the Good (if such a thing exists) and its relation to particular instances of goodness, or the nature of God and his relationship to the world.

Of course, someone might claim that there are no good arguments other than those that involve empirical hypothesis formation and testing.  (Good luck making sense of mathematics on that supposition.)  But whether that really is the case is precisely part of what is in dispute between classical theism and atheism of the kind inspired by scientism.  Hence, without an independent argument establishing that such arguments are the only respectable ones, such an objection would simply beg the question.

Now, someone might also object that an argument need not get you all the way to God to get you partof the way.  And that is perfectly true.  Suppose, for example, that some version of the argument from contingency (such as those defended by Avicenna, Aquinas, and Leibniz) really does demonstrate the existence of an absolutely necessary being.  That would certainly do much to establish classical theism, even if one did not go on to show that this necessary being had further divine attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience.  For necessity itself is one of the divine attributes, which radically differentiates God from everything else, so that to establish that something exists of necessity is a crucial step on the way to a complete argument for theism.

Could it be said, then, that even if arguing via empirical hypothesis formation and testing does not get us all the way to God, it can still be useful in getting us part of the way?  Well, to be fair, I’d be happy to consider a specific purported example to see exactly what such an objector has in mind.  But if the reasoning involved is like that described above, then I would answer in the negative. 

Suppose I kept finding leaves in my yard near a certain tree, and hypothesized that my neighbor was intentionally dumping them there.  Suppose you pointed out that the number and arrangement of the leaves is perfectly consistent with their having fallen there from the tree as a result of the wind, or because squirrels or other animals are knocking them off the branches.  Suppose I responded: “Sure, my argument doesn’t go all the way to establishing that my neighbor is responsible, but the evidence gets me at least part of the way there.”  You would no doubt be unimpressed.  Sure, my neighbor could have put the leaves there, but there is simply nothing in the evidence that requires such a distinctively human cause (as opposed to an inanimate cause like the wind, or a non-human animal).  So the support the presence of the leaves gives my hypothesis is negligible at best.

Similarly, hypothesis formation and testing like the kind described above, whatever else might be said for it, simply doesn’t deal with phenomena that require positing a divine cause, specifically.  And the reason, again, is that such hypothesizing deals only with questions about why some natural phenomenon is this way, specifically, rather than that way, whereas divine creative activity has to do with why such phenomena exist at all; and that it posits causes which merely could be, but need notbe, responsible. 

The point I am making is essentially the same as the one Kant famously made when he argued that what he called “physico-theological” arguments (an example of which would be Paley’s design argument) cannot in the nature of the case get us to God, but only to a kind of architect of the world.  The reason is that they explain at most why the world is arranged in a certain way, but not why it exists at all, and thus do nothing to establish causality of the strictly creative kind that is distinctive of God.

That is by no means to deny that such arguments might pose serious challenges to certain purported materialist or naturalistic explanations of this or that phenomenon.  But to undermine some particular naturalistic explanation, however important, is not the same thing as establishing theism.  The relationship between the two sets of issues is more complicated than that.

Davies on classical theism and divine freedom

I’ve long regarded Brian Davies’ An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion as the best introduction to that field on the market.  A fourth edition appeared not too long ago, and I’ve been meaning to post something about it.  Like earlier editions, it is very clearly written and accessible, without in any way compromising philosophical depth.  Its greatest strength, though, is the attention it gives the classical theist tradition in general and Thomism in particular, while still covering all the ground the typical analytic philosophy of religion text would (and, indeed, bringing the classical tradition into conversation with this contemporary work).  The fourth edition adds some new material along these lines.

Davies is well-known for contrasting classical theism (represented by Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, Avicenna, et al.) with what he calls the “theistic personalism” that is at least implicit in thinkers like Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, open theists, and others.  The difference between the views is that theistic personalists reject divine simplicity and, as a consequence, often reject other classical attributes such as immutability, impassibility, and eternity.  (Davies acknowledges that not all those he labels “theistic personalists” agree on every important issue and that they don’t necessarily self-identify as theistic personalists.  But he’s identifying a trend of thinking that really does exist in contemporary philosophy of religion, even if those contributing to it do not always realize they are doing so.)

Among the important additions to the new edition are a few pages addressing the question of whether, given the significant differences between classical theists’ and theistic personalists’ conceptions of God, they are even really referring to the same thing when they use the word “God.”  Davies suggests that it may be that “if differences in beliefs about God on the part of classical theists and theistic personalists are serious and irreconcilable, then classical theists and theistic personalists do not believe in the same God” (p. 19).  But he also urges caution and acknowledges that everything hinges on what counts as “serious and irreconcilable.”  He does not attempt to resolve the matter, but recommends looking at Peter Geach’s treatment of the question (which I discussed in a post some years back).

Several new pages are also added to the previous edition’s discussion of divine freedom in the chapter on divine simplicity.  (Davies’ views on this issue were the subject of another post from years ago.)  Critics of divine simplicity often argue that it is incompatible with God’s having freely created the universe.  For if God could have done other than what he has in fact done, doesn’t that entail that God is changeable, contrary to divine simplicity?  And if he is in fact unchangeable or immutable, doesn’t that entail that he could not have done otherwise, and thus created of necessity rather than freely?  In response, Davies points out, first, that creating freely simply does not in fact entail changing.  Certainly it simply begs the question to assume otherwise.  For the classical theist, God creates eternally or atemporally, and what is eternal or atemporal does not undergo change.  Still, he could have done otherwise than create, so that this eternal act of creation is free.

Second, Davies notes that in order to show that an eternal and immutable God’s act of creation would be unfree, one would have to show that there is something either internal to God’s nature or external to him that compels him to create.  But given that the divine nature is as classical theists, on independent grounds, argue it to be (pure actuality, perfect, omnipotent, etc.) there can be no need in God for anything distinct from him, so that nothing in his nature can compel him to create.  And since, the classical theist also argues (and again on independent grounds) there is nothing apart from God that God did not create, there can be nothing distinct from him that compels him to create.  Hence we cannot make sense of God’s being in any way compelled to create, and thus must attribute freedom to him.

Third, Davies notes that those who suppose that freedom in God would entail changeability often presuppose an anthropomorphic conception of divine choice.  In particular, they imagine it involving a temporal process of weighing alternative courses of action before finally deciding upon one of them.  But that is not what God is like, given that he is eternal or outside time, and that he is omniscient and doesn’t have to “figure things out” through some kind of reasoning process.

Fourth, Davies notes that critics of the doctrine of divine simplicity argue that the doctrine implies that God is identical to his act of creation, and that accordingly, if God exists necessarily, then his act of creation is necessary.  But if it is necessary, they conclude, then it cannot be free.  In reply, Davies distinguishes between an actconsidered as something an agent does, and what results from an act, which is external to the agent.  He then argues that even if God’s act, being identical to him, is necessary, it doesn’t follow that the result of that act (namely, the created world) is necessary.

Finally, Davies emphasizes that “to speak of God as simple is not to attribute a property to God but to deny certain things when it comes to God” (p. 179).  Here, as he has in other work, Davies emphasizes the idea that the ascription of attributes to God should be understood as an exercise in negative or apophatic theology.  The main arguments for classical theism, he points out, emphasize both that the world is contingent or conditioned in various respects, and that an ultimate explanation of the world must be unconditioned and non-contingent in those respects.  (Though, just in case he wouldn’t himself use it, I should note that the language of “conditioned” and “unconditioned” in this context is mine, not Davies’.)   In particular, God must not be changeable, must not have properties that are distinct from each other or from him, and so on.  This is what it means to characterize him as simple.  But by the same token, he must not be compelled to create by anything either internal to his nature or outside of him.  Hence divine simplicity, divine freedom, and the relationship between them are properly understood as characterizations of what God is not.

Augustine on divine punishment of the good alongside the wicked

Many today labor under the delusion that the reality of suffering is a difficulty for Christianity – as if Christian doctrine would lead us to expect little or no suffering, so that its adherents should be flummoxed by suffering’s prevalence.  As I have discussed in previous articles, this is the reverse of the truth.  The Catholic faith teaches that suffering is the inexorable consequence of original sin and past actual sin.  It is an essential part of the long and painful process of sanctification, of overcoming sinful habits of thought and action.  It is the inevitable concomitant of the persecution Christians must face for preaching the Gospel and condemning the world’s wickedness.  It is an inescapable punishment for sin, which we must embrace in a penitential spirit.  By way of suffering we pay both our own temporal debt and that of others for whom we might offer up our suffering.  By way of it we most closely unite ourselves to Christ’s Passion.  The extent and depth of human suffering thus confirmsrather than disconfirms the claims of Christianity.

As I proposed in those earlier articles, bafflement at suffering is less the cause than the consequence of the modern West’s apostasy from the Catholic faith.  It also reflects the softness and decadence of a dying civilization that has become accustomed to affluence and cannot fathom a higher good beyond ease and beyond this life, for the sake of which we might embrace suffering.  Nor is it apostates alone who exhibit this blindness.  The spiritual rot has eaten its way deep into the Church, afflicting even those who are otherwise loyal to orthodoxy and Christian morality.  And in our disinclination to accept suffering, we are only ensuring ourselves more of it.

Here as elsewhere, the great St. Augustine sees clearly and speaks frankly where we moderns deceive ourselves and obfuscate.  In chapters 8-10 of Book I of The City of God, he discusses how and why evil and suffering befall the good as well as the wicked in this life.  As our own age descends into ever deeper moral, political, social, and economic disorder, we would do well to meditate upon his bracing teaching.  If the faithful believe they will or ought to be spared the brunt of the punishment that the sins of our civilization are liable to bring down upon it, they are sorely mistaken.  Things are likely to get worse for all of us, even if only so that divine providence can ultimately bring something better out of the chaos.

In chapter 8, Augustine notes that while there is in this life some connection between evildoing and suffering on the one hand, and righteousness and blessings on the other, it is very far from tight.  The wicked enjoy many good things, while the good suffer much misfortune.  To be sure, this will be redressed in the afterlife, when the good will be rewarded with eternal happiness and the wicked with eternal torment.  “But as for the good things of this life, and its ills,” Augustine writes, “God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.” 

When we wonder why God permits us to suffer even though we try to obey him, part of the reason is precisely that we might be saved.  For if we pursue righteousness only when it is easy to do so, our virtue is bound to be shallow and unlikely to last.  Nor, if the connection between virtuous behavior and material blessings is too tight, are we likely to pursue the former for the right reasons.  We cannot achieve happiness in the world to come if we become too attached to the world that is, and suffering is a means of preventing the latter.

Moreover, says Augustine, the difference between a truly righteous man and a wicked one is often exposed precisely by suffering:

Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer.  For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.  For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke… so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.  And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise.  So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

Now, so far Augustine is addressing suffering that is unmerited.  But there is also suffering that good men can merit and bring upon themselves, as Augustine explains in chapter 9.  This is so in several ways.  First, of course, nobody’s perfect.  Even those who avoid the more blatant violations of Christian morality still typically exhibit moral failings of various lesser kinds:

Although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills.  For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh.  Though he do not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account.

But there is also the attitude that the good man takes toward those who do live especially wicked lives.  There are many who disapprove of such wickedness and would never practice it themselves, but who nevertheless, out of cowardice, refrain from criticizing it in others.  Here Augustine makes some remarks that are especially relevant to our times, and worth quoting at length:

Where can we readily find a man who holds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions threatened?  Where is the man who lives with them in the style in which it becomes us to live with them?  For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we shrink from the labor or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing.  So that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons, yet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore, even though their own sins be slight and venial, they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity they quite escape punishment.  Justly, when God afflicts them in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter, through love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to these sinners.

Here Augustine teaches that it is not enough to refrain from the sins of wicked men.  The Christian must also criticize them for their wickedness, and try to get them to repent of it.  To be sure, Augustine goes on to acknowledge that there may be occasions where one might justifiably opt to postpone such criticism until an opportune moment, or refrain from it out of a reasonable fear of doing more harm than good.  But he teaches here that it is not justifiable to refrain from such criticism merely because it is difficult, or because we fear causing offense and losing friends, or because we don’t want to risk losing status or other worldly goods.  For the wicked are in danger of damnation if they do not repent, and we “wickedly blind ourselves” if we shirk our duty to encourage them to do so.  Even if we avoid damnation ourselves, we will justly suffer alongside them when divine providence visits this-worldlypunishments upon them (social and economic disorder, natural disasters, and the like). 

Here too Augustine emphasizes that God allows the good to suffer alongside the wicked in part to wean them from their attachment to this world, where their reluctance to criticize the wicked is a symptom of this attachment:

What is blame-worthy is, that they who themselves revolt from the conduct of the wicked, and live in quite another fashion, yet spare those faults in other men which they ought to reprehend and wean them from; and spare them because they fear to give offense, lest they should injure their interests in those things which good men may innocently and legitimately use – though they use them more greedily than becomes persons who are strangers in this world, and profess the hope of a heavenly country.

Augustine is especially hard on Christians (such as clergy) who do not have family obligations and the like to worry about, yet still shrink from doing their duty to condemn the wickedness that surrounds them:

[They] do often take thought of their own safety and good name, and abstain from finding fault with the wicked, because they fear their wiles and violence.  And although they do not fear them to such an extent as to be drawn to the commission of like iniquities, nay, not by any threats or violence soever; yet those very deeds which they refuse to share in the commission of they often decline to find fault with, when possibly they might by finding fault prevent their commission.  They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.

The application to the present day is obvious.  Consider the sexual sins into which our age has, arguably, sunk more deeply than any previous one.  So as to avoid criticizing these sins too harshly or even talking much about them at all, even many otherwise conservative Christians lie to themselves about their gravity, pretending they are slight when in fact (and as the tradition has always insisted) they are extremely serious.  Such sins have, among their consequences: the even graver sin of murder, in the form of abortion; fatherlessness and the poverty and social breakdown that is its sequel; addiction to pornography and the marital problems it brings in its wake; the loneliness and economic insecurity of women who in their youth were used by men for pleasure, and are later unable to find husbands; a general breakdown in rationality that has now reached the point where even the objective difference between men and women is shrilly denied; and the willingness to mutilate children’s bodies in the name of this gender ideology.

Worse, many Christians deceive themselves into thinking that it is love or compassion for the sinner that prevents them from condemning these sins too harshly.  In fact, given the grave damage caused by these sins, and the difficulty so many have in extricating themselves from them, to refrain from warning others against them is the opposite of compassionate.  Yet the present age is so addicted to them that, of all sins, sexual sins are those criticism of which puts the critic at greatest danger.  People fear for their reputations, and even livelihoods, if they speak up.  Hence, as Augustine says, “their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.”

The consequence, Augustine teaches, is that many sinners who might have repented had they been warned will end up damned as a result.  And those who failed to warn them will suffer at least temporal punishments along with them, because they were too attached to the comforts of this life to help others prepare for the next.  Augustine writes:

Accordingly this seems to me to be one principal reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community.  They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal... For so long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may not come to a better mind.  These selfish persons have more cause to fear than those to whom it was said through the prophet, He is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand (Ezekiel 33:6).

In chapter 10, Augustine hammers on the theme that the treasure of Christians is to be found in heaven and not in any of the goods of this life, and that, accordingly, no worldly suffering can possibly truly harm them.  He writes:

They should endure all torment, if need be, for Christ's sake; that they might be taught to love Him rather who enriches with eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and not silver and gold, for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether they preserved it by telling a lie or lost it by telling the truth.  For under these tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him...  So that possibly the torture which taught them that they should set their affections on a possession they could not lose, was more useful than those possessions which, without any useful fruit at all, disquieted and tormented their anxious owners.

As this last remark indicates, the loss of worldly blessings – material goods, reputation, friendships, health, livelihood, even life itself – is permitted by God so that we might learn not to cling to these things at the expense of the beatific vision, the value of which trumps all else.  God thus only ever permits suffering not in spite of his goodness, but rather precisely because of his goodness.  As Augustine says, there isn’t “any evil [that] happens to the faithful and godly which cannot be turned to profit,” so that, with St. Paul, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

Update on All One in Christ

Recently I was interviewed by Steve and Becky Greene on The Catholic Conversation about my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory .  You can listen to the interview here.  Author Gavin Ashenden and teacher Katherine Bennett discuss the book at the Catholic Herald’s Merely Catholic podcast, judging it “an absolute must-read for all Catholic educators.”  Meanwhile, at the Acton Institute Powerblog, Sarah Negri kindly reviews the book.  From the review:

This book is perfectly subtitled in that it spends significant time evaluating both the church’s denunciation of racism and the incompatibility of Church teaching with CRT… Readers who seek a thorough overview of the church’s statements and position on racism will find it here, and Christians who have ever experienced confusion as to whether CRT obtains as a remedy for it will come away with the understanding that Christianity and critical race theory rest on entirely different first principles; indeed, they present irreconcilable worldviews…

Despite the subtitle’s giveaway that Feser will ultimately reject CRT as contrary to church teaching, his exposé of its tenets is impressive.  Drawing mainly from Ibram X. Kendi’s and Robin DiAngelo’s bestselling popularizations of the theory, he takes time to lay out the claims of CRT’s popular proponents with precision and a fair amount of objectivity…

Perhaps the most satisfying chapter in this book is when Feser bombards that worldview with the artillery of logical principles.  He proceeds down a long line of logical fallacies committed by popular critical race theorists…

Other highlights of All One in Christ include a refreshing discussion of nationalism, patriotism, immigration, and integration, all of which pertain to any serious analysis of race and ethnicity…

The book also makes a social scientific case in support of alternative theories to CRT that align better with church teaching.  Feser provides evidence from economics, history, sociology, and psychology to counter CRT proponents’ unempirical claims and offers other explanations (such as cultural factors) for the supposed racial discrimination at the root of socioeconomic disparities…

Feser is overwhelmingly convincing in his contention that, while racism is a grave evil and remains a painful reality in our own day, a faithful Christian (or any reasonable person who cares about human flourishing) should not espouse critical race theory as a viable solution.

Negri’s main criticism of the book is the following:

One rather wonders whether Feser, out of the principle of charity, which he accuses CRT proponents of violating, ought to have engaged the academicians who promote CRT rather than its popularizers, since he demolishes the assertions of the latter so effectively.  It would have felt more like a fair fight.  But in choosing to dismantle the popular arguments of CRT, he does send in his troops where the attack is thickest, since most people’s understanding of CRT comes from its more popular version.

In response, I’d point out that these remarks are a bit misleading insofar as I do in fact also quote from and discuss the work of academic critical race theorists like Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Alan Freeman, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.  But it is true that there is a special focus on popularizers like Kendi and DiAngelo, and for precisely the reason Negri says.  I defended this approach in a recent article.

Other reviews of and interviews about All One in Christ can be found here, here, and here.